1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a closure for a container such as a bottle, and more particularly, to a resealable, tamper evident closure for a container such as a bottle.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of tamper evident or indicating closures has become quite common, particularly in connection with the packaging of consumer products such as food and beverage products. The tamper evident nature of the closure provides a level of confidence to consumer that the product they have purchased has not been previously opened or tampered with. Several temper evident closure structures are known in the art.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,268 to Bullock, III describes a plastic cap for a container that has a top disk, an upper skirt extending downwardly from the top disk, and a lower skirt extending downwardly from the upper skirt. The upper and lower skirts are joined by a line of minimum thickness that extends around the entire circumference of the cap. Both the upper skirt and the lower skirt are provided with locking beads formed in three separate sections around the inner circumference of the respective skirt. The locking beads are designed to engage corresponding beads provided on the container. In order to remove the cap from the container, a user pulls a tear tab provided on the lower skirt and separates the lower skirt from the upper skirt along the line of minimum thickness.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,920 to Dahl describes a closure for a container that includes an end panel and a skirt depending downwardly therefrom. The skirt includes a lower band having a notch in which a tamper indicating member is provided. The tamper indicating member is attached to the skirt by axial bridges and to the lower band of the skirt by circumferential bridges. The tamper indicating member is provided with a bead on the internal surface thereof that engages a bead provided on the container to which the closure is attached so as to interlock the tamper indicating member with the container. The lower band does not include a locking bead and does not interlock with the container. The bridges may all rupture when the closure is removed from the container with the tamper indicating member dropping out and leaving a readily observable notch in the band. Alternatively, one of the circumferential extending bridges may be made of sufficient strength so that the tamper indicating member remains attached to the closure, but its rupture from the remainder of the closure is obvious.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,248,050 to Janousch et al. describes a tamper-evident screw cap for a bottle that includes a lower guarantee strip having a predetermined breakage point at which the guarantee strip is able to be separated though its entire width. The predetermined breakage point includes at least two ribs that connect the ends of the guarantee strip across a separation space. A window-shaped stress relief aperture is arranged near the predetermined breakage point to improve the expandability of the guarantee strip when the cap is being screwed on to the bottle for the first time. In this instance, the stress relief aperture prevents the forces caused by the circumferential expansion of the guarantee strip from breaking the predetermined breakage point. When screwing the cap off for the first time, a flow of forces is created in the guarantee strip such that the stress relief aperture is no longer effective and the guarantee strip fulfills its function by tearing or otherwise separating from the cap to indicate that the cap has been removed. The portion of the guarantee strip that separates from the cap includes a retention element in the form of a bead that engages a corresponding bead on the bottle. The portion of the guarantee strip that is not separated from the cap does not include a similar bead. The upper portion of the cap includes threads for screwing the cap onto the bottle.
While the above described container closures may be effective for particular applications, there is room for improvement in the field of resealable, tamper evident container closures.